Author: Tom Patriot

It’s not a shock: Better bandage promotes powerful healing

Tom Patriot

A new, low-cost wound dressing developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers could dramatically speed up healing in a surprising way. The method leverages energy generated from a patient’s own body motions to apply gentle electrical pulses at the site of an injury. In rodent tests, the dressings reduced healing times to a mere three days compared to nearly two weeks for the normal healing process. “We were surprised to see such a fast recovery rate,” says Xudong Wang, a professor of materials science and engineering at UW-Madison. “We suspected that…

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Mother’s behavioral corrections tune infant’s brain to angry tone

Tom Patriot

The same brain network that adults use when they hear angry vocalizations is at work in infants as young as six months old, an effect that is strongest in infants whose mothers spend the most time controlling their behavior, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chen Zhao of the University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues. The study indicates that the network recruited in adult vocal emotion processing is up and running quite early in life, and that its sensitivity to anger is partly a result of…

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Chrissy Teigen Is Obsessed With This Keto Snack—and You Will Be Too

Tom Patriot

Chrissy Teigen isn’t just a supermodel mom with the funniest social media presence on the Internet. She’s a self-proclaimed foodie with two cookbooks under her belt and some serious skills in the kitchen. So when she tweets out a recommendation for a new snack food, we definitely want to know more about it. Teigen took to Twitter last week to share her latest snacking discovery: Pork Clouds, a brand of pork rinds (which are fried pork skins, basically). And while she didn’t reveal what she liked about the habanero pepper variety of this crunchy treat,…

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Keeping active in middle age may be tied to lower risk of dementia

Tom Patriot

Keeping physically and mentally active in middle age may be tied to a lower risk of developing dementia decades later, according to a study published in the medical journal Neurology. Mental activities included reading, playing instruments, singing in a choir, visiting concerts, gardening, doing needlework or attending religious services. “These results indicate that these activities in middle age may play a role in preventing dementia in old age and preserving cognitive health,” said study author Jenna Najar, MD, from Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg. “It’s exciting as these are activities that…

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